Cassell's dictionary of cookery

— The following directions are given by one writer as the result of some experience and study :— 1. Let the oatmeal be of medium size in the gi-ain. If coarse oatmeal be used, the cakes will not bear kneading out to the proper thinness, but will break in pieces ; if the finest be used, the cakes will be tough, not crisp, as they ought to be. 2. Use cold water only in making the dough. If hot or lukewarm water be used, the cakes will also be tough, and quite wanting in the peculiar sweetness that cakes made with cold water have. The use of fine oatmeal and hot water certainly makes the work easier to the person making the cakes, and also produces a better-looking article, but just as surely makes the cakes much less pleasant to eat. 3. Use no fat, nor carbonate of soda, nor anything but oatmeal, cold water, and just as much salt as is used in the making of bread from flour. Fat and carbonate of soda both cause the cakes to be shorter; but both, especially the former, have a great tendency to produce heartburn and other unpleasant results in the eater. Cakes properly made do not require any such devices to make them very pleasant eating. 4. Knead up the dough as quickly as possible, and make no more dough at a time than is enough for one cake, which cut into three or four sections for convenience of handling. If the dough is made in a lump for a number of cakes, those that arc baked last will not be so crisp and sweet as the first baked. The size of the cake wiU be determined by the diameter of the hot-plate on girdle on which it is to be baked, but cakes of small diameter are more easily made by persons unaccustomed to the work. 5. Make the cakes thin — as little over an eighth of an inch as possible. If rolled out thicker than that they will not have the nice crispness that a good oat-cake always has. G. Bake the one side on the hot-plate over the fire just as much as wiU serve to stiffen the cake sufficiently to bear its own weight when set on edge in the toaster before the fire. The more the baking is done before the fire the better. Lastly, do not eat them hot, and keep them until used in a perfectly dry and, if possible, rather warm place. Scotch Oatmeal Porridge.— Oatmeal porridge is made of oatmeal, water, and salt only ; no sweet milk, buttermilk, nor butter beiug used in the preparation of the food, although all of these articles may be used as relishes with it. It is best made from meal of medium coarseness. The water must be boiling • when the meal is stirred in, and it must be stirred in carefully and gradually, and not thrown in all at once, and the stirring must be continued during the time of boiling, which should not be less than fifteen minutes. Many persons like it boiled longer. If longer boUed, the grain of the meal gets softer, and of course the porridge gets thicker. Porridge is more palatable when a plate or other flat dish is used for it than when it is put into a bowl or basin. When a plate is used the moisture SCO (844) SEA evaporates more quickly and equably than it does from a bowl, and the porridge can be eaten sooner after cooking, and the sooner it is ■^ten the pleasanter it tastes.